If today we move through the doorway to the tropics, then yesterday afternoon was certainly the keyhole. We anchored amongst the San Blas islands; countless lily pads with postcard-perfect palm trees and fishermen shacks, the sun like a huge golden frog leaping through the cloudy skies from one to the other. On Dog Island the sun stayed, and we took our guests ashore. Here a small group of tattooed Kuna Indians peered through lines of embroidered molas, somehow restraining a smile as we donned face-masks and flippers and flopped into the sea.
Like Alice in Wonderland peering through the Looking Glass, snorkeling is certainly a glimpse into the unknown. Just a few arm-strokes from the white sand, a rusted wreck lay under-water. As if resurrected from the dead, its gnarled and broken body was festooned with all forms of life; multi-colored algae, feather stars, anemones and coral. Flashing in and out of the darkness of the hull, surgeon fish, damsels, wrasse and even a grouper. Buoyant in the blue and green reflections of the surface, we were like birds suspended in awkward flight above a strange city. Every now and then a shell or a particularly beautiful landscape of coral enticed someone to dive downwards, down to where it seemed as if the Caribbean had truly swallowed you whole.
Now, at sea, that sensation remains. With the rolling and pitching of the ship, and the air wet with heat, it is not hard to imagine that we are swimming still. Easing open the door.
